Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders
Stimulating DVD Movie Demand with Legal Burning
Podcast Video | Posted by Phil Leigh on February 20, 2008
If you would like to learn a legal way for Internet merchants to produce DVD movies on-demand, or retail outlets to burn them on premises, or consumers to download and burn them on their home computers, this interview is for you. (Part 1 of 2).
Subject: Our guest today is Jim Taylor who is the Senior Vice President and Manager of the Advanced Technology Group at Sonic Solutions. His company is a leader in multimedia software. Their new Q-flix technology enables DVDs of popular movies to be created on-demand. It can be applied to (1) Internet merchants who will use it to fill orders much like on-demand book publishing, (2) retail stores at Kiosk stands or at counters similar to photo processing labs, and (3) consumers with Internet-connected computers in their own homes.It appears that the growth of pre-packaged DVD movies has topped-out. Shipments in 2006 were basically flat with those of ‘04 and ‘05. Moreover, Wal-Mart, who is the biggest seller of DVDs, reported that sales in 2007 declined for the first time.
As a result, Hollywood studios are looking for ways to stimulate growth in the DVD market. One strategy is to sell a new version of DVD that provides higher resolution. Following a standards war, that approach seems now to be gravitating toward the Blu-ray format. Nonetheless, sales of High-Def DVDs are small and not likely to add much until more consumers buy High-Def TVs.
Another way to boost sales in the DVD marketing window is to enable the movies to be sold as copy-protected digital files. While this effort is moving forward, it is hampered by the complexities of watching the digital downloads on a television. Q-flix solves that problem, because it provides a burned DVD that will play through the television via conventional DVD players of which there are 1.2 billion in use around the World.
Phil’s Take. Ideally, when I buy a movie I’d like to buy it like I do music from iTunes or Amazon. That way there’s no need for intermediate media like a CD or DVD. However, the problem is that nobody is yet providing a convenient way to get the digital files to the television. Apple TV and Amazon/TiVo seem to get the closest, but it’s still a bit of a hassle. Unfortunately, Sonic’s Q-flix isn’t altogether satisfactory either because one must wait to complete the burning process.
The best market for Q-flix is probably the Internet merchant who wants to fill orders promptly from the Long-Tail where he cannot afford to stock inventory. The second best market might be the retail merchant like CVS or Walgreens, but if too many customers queue-up at a Q-flix enabled photo lab or Kiosk, they may have too much of a wait.
Categories: Podcast Video
Tags: digital-media, DVD, Hollywood-Studios, Internet-Media, Jim-Taylor, Motion-Pictures, Movies, Online-Media, Phil-Leigh, Sonic-Solutions
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Download to iPod link doesnt work, can the op mail it to me.
I suspect the reason that you say it is not working is because the player (presumably Quicktime) waits for the entire file to be downloaded before it starts to play the first part. If that is true then all you need to do is wait a few minutes for the download to be complete. It is working for me.
However, if you would rather just put the url in the quicktime player you can use the following url which is where the download comes from.
http://www.futureofpodcasting.com/downloads/sonic1_ipod.mp4